I’m Not A Statistic

Even a cursory review of recent news will show that the number of people who are hungry in the United States has increased dramatically over the past three years.  I met yesterday with some volunteers who are working with our Mission Backpack program and one of them mentioned that one of our elementary schools (we have 51 in our district) has gone from 21% free and reduced price meal participation to 52% since 2007.  The school, located in an area with a lot of manufacturing and construction employment, is a snapshot of what is happening across the United States.

Children are hungry through no fault of their own.  While kids are usually hungry because their parents are struggling financially and spending the bulk of their income keeping a roof over their family’s head, some kids are hungry because the adults in their household are impaired, or irresponsible, or neglectful or abusive. 

The reality is it doesn’t matter why.  It just matters.  It matters because hungry kids have difficulty concentrating and learning.  They miss more days of school because of illnesses.  They don’t sleep well and are not prepared for learning because of it. 

Even if your kids are grown and gone, it matters because every child who fails to succeed in school has the potential to cost all of us more throughout their lives.  It matters because many of these hungry kids won’t be able to fill jobs as nurses and teachers and firefighters and police officers.   

It matters because hungry kids aren’t a statistic.  They’re hungry. 

Find out what you can do.  Call your local elementary school and find out if they have a program to support high risk kids with weekend food.  If they don’t, start one.  It matters.

What’s On My Plate?

The US Department of Agriculture has a simple to understand graphic that shows us the types of foods we need to eat and what proportions we should consume

Green for vegetables

Purple for proteins

Red for fruits

Brown for grains

Blue for dairy

Half our plate should be veggies and fruits, with veggies a bit more than fruit

Protein should be not quite one quarter of the plate

Grains should be a bit more than one quarter of the plate

Dairy should be a small amount, less than protein

Water should be the drink of choice

And little to no added fat, salt or sugar

A “serving” is half a cup for most food types, again with the proportions as above.  A serving of meat, chicken or fish is about the size of a deck of cards or the palm of an adult’s hand.

Yes it’s simple, maybe simplistic, but it is something a kindergartner, or someone who can’t read, can understand and put into practice.  The rest of us can spend a lot of time learning what to eat in great detail, but this My Plate gives us a place to start.  And that is the point – you have to start somewhere to get on the road to healthier eating.  It might be smart to start with something simple, like My Plate.

See http://www.choosemyplate.gov/  for more information.

Growing for Good

There is a lot of activity and conversation about local food, in particular about community gardens.  Most community gardens involve neighbors working a plot of land loaned for that purpose.  Those who put in the work share the food that is grown and often give the excess to soup kitchens or food pantries.  Sometimes the gardens are on a church or school property and provide nutrition, education, and recreation for the participants as well as the members or students. 

Ordinances and regulations about community gardens range from non-existent to detailed and controlling.   Some municipalities just say "No" rather than write a reasonable ordinance that would detail what is required to establish and maintain a garden.  If you're thinking about establishing a community garden, talk first with your local zoning staff to find out what is required.

Many municipalities are getting in the act, planting gardens in their green spaces.  Some take it to a higher level, planting not only to make the food available for eating but also using the plants as landscaping in flower beds and planters around the city.

Growing a garden is a lot of work for a single homeowner or family.  But coming together with neighbors to work a garden, and sharing information and the food grown, brings neighbors together, gives great satisfaction to those involved and even to those who are living nearby a community garden.

Not much is more beautiful than a well tended garden planted with a variety of food that feeds the eyes, the stomach and the soul.

Mission Backpack

Do you know that 34,000 of the 69,900 kids in Greenville County schools receive free or reduced price meals at school?   Sadly many of these same kids often don’t have much to eat at home at night or on the weekends.

This fall Loaves & Fishes will launch Mission Backpack.  Working with generous sponsors in our community, three elementary schools will receive food for 25 of their most at risk students to take home each weekend. 

Sponsors are responsible for obtaining the child friendly shelf stable food by purchasing or recruiting donations of specific foods.   Volunteers are needed to shop for food and to inventory food on hand each week.  Additional volunteers are needed to back the bags that will go home with the children on the last day of school each week.  Delivery drivers will bring the packed bags to the schools on mutually agreed-upon dates.

Although there are backpack programs in a number of schools in Greenville County, more sponsors are needed.  Sponsors can be churches, civic groups, businesses or professional organizations – any group that has a heart for hungry kids.

Please contact Loaves & Fishes at 864-232-3595 to learn how your group can become a sponsor or get teamed up with others to help feed hungry kids.

Learning On Empty

One out of every four children in the United States is hungry.  Not just hungry because it’s been four hours since breakfast: hungry because it’s been since lunch on Friday.

Far too many children are not getting much to eat at night and on the weekends.  These are children who depend on meals at school, breakfasts and lunches, to provide 10 out of 21 regular meals each week.  These aren’t kids who are neglected by uncaring parents.  These are kids whose parents are struggling to keep a roof over the family’s head and heat on in the winter.  There isn’t much left of a small paycheck once those items are taken care of.

The challenge of hunger is big because food is a daily requirement.  Not being able to afford enough food places a huge burden on families.  Even families that receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps) benefits typically run out of that funding in 2 ½ weeks.  Emergency food pantries provide food to take home, but each one operates differently and gives out varying amounts of food.  This forces families to spend time going to several sources to obtain enough food.  And that assumes that there are places to get food that can be accessed when families are able to get there.

How can we expect children to learn and thrive on empty tummies?  If education is the key factor in building a self sufficient individual, we must make hungry kids a thing of the past if we ever expect them to succeed.  They cannot do it alone and they cannot do it on an empty tummy.

Do You Know Why Food Costs So Much?

There’ve been lots of comments in the news about the high cost of food.  Just this morning the very hot weather in the central part of the United States is being added to the reasons why food costs continue to increase.   All the factors in play certainly contribute to these growing expenses. 

But there’s one most of us don’t pay much attention to:  the cost of diesel fuel.  In spite of the emphasis on local food, the vast majority of the food we consume in the United States is moved by diesel fueled vehicles.  Whether it is grain being harvested on a farm, tomatoes being trucked from California to South Carolina, or ingredients being delivered to a food processor while a truck picks up the finished product, diesel fuel moves all of it.

After Katrina and the devastation to the oil production along the Gulf Coast, the cost of diesel, which had previously been as much as $1.50 less than the cost of a gallon of gasoline, started to climb.  Nearly six years after Hurricane Katrina the cost is between $.30 and $.50 per gallon more than the cost of gas.

Though buying local from area farmers and producers certainly reduces the cost, as well as the use of diesel fuel, there’s no getting around that the cost of food is directly tied to our dependence on tomatoes in January, asparagus in August and peaches in December, all of it arriving at our local market thanks to diesel fuel.

An Answer to South Carolina’s Obesity Challenge

By now you may have heard that our new Miss South Carolina was once a chubby teen.   It was her doctor’s intervention that got her attention.  The pain in her legs, he told her, was directly attributable to her weight.  

Bree Boyce made the connection and made significant changes to her eating habits.  She started an exercise routine.  But, she lost the weight the old fashioned way, over three years.

Two big things are significant here:  her doctor looked her right in the eye and told her that she was the cause of her problem and she lost the weight slowly with changes to her eating and with exercise under the guidance of a trainer.

It is up to each adult to make decisions about what and how much we eat.  And it is up to each adult to make a choice to include more exercise in our daily lives.

The road to gaining weight is smoothly paved.  The road to a healthy weight and fitness is bumpy and steep.  Which road to take is up to each of us.

Do You Know How to Cook?

If you are interested in eating a healthy diet and if you are reading newspapers and magazine articles and watching TV you’ve heard that home cooked food is healthier, less fattening and provides the added benefit of a time for members of the household to sit down together to eat and to catch up with one another.

But there’s a problem with this approach.  Over the past 30 years or so the number of two career couples has risen dramatically.  This means that both are at their workplace for a typical 8 hour day plus time to get to work and get back home.  Energy is low, time is short, and then there’s the big problem:  lots of people of all education levels, incomes high and low, family backgrounds of all types, have never learned to cook. 

We’re not talking gourmet fare here, just a protein dish, some vegetables, a starch or a salad.  Oh, and preferably they all are ready to eat at the same time.  Seems simple enough, but maybe it isn’t.

Many of us have never learned to cook.  My mother wanted no one else in her kitchen.  I had to figure it out on my own.  Many of us went from home to school to work and living away from home and just never took the time to learn.   Fast food was cheap and easy.  Many went to work in their teens and kept on working.  Learning to cook just didn’t happen.

Certainly anyone can learn to cook a basic meal.  Stores give recipes away, the Internet has an endless supply of recipes, classes are available at lots of places.   Experience and confidence help a lot and those come with repeating the effort to make a meal.

If you are committed to eating healthier, you pretty much have got to learn to cook.  What time is dinner?

If you grow it, they may not come . . .

When I began working in the voluntary food assistance arena I was surprised that people who are hungry would not eat certain foods.  I thought that if someone was truly hungry, they would eat anything. 

While it is true that someone is who clinically starving will eat just about anything, including non-foods, in order to fill their stomach and quiet their hunger, most of those who are hungry in our country are not at that level of hunger.  And no one should have to be starving to receive food assistance.

What we eat is a cultural norm that varies from family to family and from region to region.  If you grew up on a meat (here meaning beef), a starch and two vegetables washed down with a glass of whole milk you might find a piece of fish, a salad and a little bit of pasta with a glass of water not to your liking.  If your family always had freshly baked bread at every meal, you might think that a loaf of plain white bread was not very appealing.  If you’ve never eaten bagels and lox for breakfast, they might be a tough sell.

I met with a man the other day who is growing vegetables to give to the hungry.  He said, “We’re not growing radishes.  People don’t really like radishes that much.  We are growing things that people will eat like tomatoes, squash, beans, and peas.”  Now this makes perfect sense to me. 

It is easy to assume that we know what people “should” eat.   Let’s be honest and admit that adults are able to make choices about what they like and what they don’t.   Making a range of quality food available to choose respects the individual and their decisions. 

Graduate or Go Hungry!

It’s high school graduation time and across the Upstate there are proud parents, relieved graduates and smiles all around.  There should be, because the graduates being celebrating have achieved something 25 percent of their fellow classmates have failed to accomplish.  Does that matter?  It should, because the facts don’t lie:

               A high school dropout will earn $9,200 less than a graduate.

               Greenville County high school dropouts are twice as likely to be unemployed.

               High school dropouts in Greenville County are 2.5 times more likely to live in poverty.

               High school graduates live 9.2 years longer than high school dropouts.

So your kids are grown and gone, so you’re single and don’t plan on having kids and you really don’t care?  You should.  Low high school graduation rates cost everyone in our community more money.

High crime rate - High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested and 8 times more likely to be in jail or prison.

Expensive prison system - It costs more than twice as much per year to incarcerate a prisoner in our state ($13,590) and in our county ($17,213) than to educate a student in Greenville County ($6,498).

More expensive government assistance programs - 40 percent of dropouts receive some type of government assistance.

Higher unemployment rates -Studies show when students drop out of high school, their prospects for the future are greatly dimmed without a degree. 

Fewer jobs for uneducated workers - The number of jobs requiring education beyond high school is growing twice as fast as jobs that only require on-the-job training.

What can you do?  Everything from learning more about the problem to getting involved with a school tutoring program, a mentoring organization, speaking at a school career fair, and talking sincerely with the children you know about what they want to do when they grow up and what it will take to reach their goals.   Keep encouraging those kids at every step along the way.  Caring about a child’s future will pay big benefits for the child and for our community.

It May Be Humid, But It’s Still a Desert

The term “food desert” may be new to some.   A food desert is a low-income community without ready access to healthy and affordable food.  The most striking example of a food desert is the city of Detroit, Michigan that does not have a single grocery store within the city limits. 

Ready access is defined as being located within one mile of a place to purchase fresh produce, dairy and fresh meats, typically a full service grocery store although farmers’ markets and small local grocery stores do provide some access in certain areas.   The availability of transportation is a significant factor for low income families seeking food, especially here in Greenville County, South Carolina.  More than 50,000 people in Greenville County live more than one mile from a grocery store and do not have a car.

Public transportation is very limited in geography and service hours.

If  you’re curious about where the food deserts are located in Greenville County, and what criteria are used to assign that title, check out this website.   Read the information about how determinations were made, then put in an address and click on the census tracts to see specifics.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/index.htm

How fresh!

Fresh used to be a word describing someone who was behaving rudely.  

Today fresh is a word that implies goodness, quality, something desirable. 

Fresh produce is not expensive to grow on your own – though it does take time, energy and effort. 

Fresh produce you purchase can be expensive – ask the watermelon lover who buys some in February in Michigan! 

We are blessed with a long growing season in South Carolina and from early May until late October we can enjoy an ever changing bounty of vegetables and fruits.  Learning to enjoy what is in season when it is in season allows us to have the freshest at the lowest price.

There are now farmers’ markets all over Greenville County and an effort is being made to make sure low income families that receive SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Food Stamps) benefits can purchase fresh items at the Saturday Market on Main Street in Greenville using their EBT card.  Other markets have similar programs.

There’s also the chance to learn from the farmers.  They love to get questions about what variety you’re looking at or how to prepare different items.  If you’re looking for something in particular ask if they grow it or know a farmer who does.

If you’re looking for a farmers’ market close to you check out the St. Francis Community Garden blog http://lg35communitygarden.blogspot.com/     and go to the April 26, 2010 “Local, Local, Local” post for a list of local area markets. 

Fresh is best and fresh and accessible is even better.

How fresh!

Fresh used to be a word describing someone who was behaving rudely.  

Today fresh is a word that implies goodness, quality, something desirable. 

Fresh produce is not expensive to grow on your own – though it does take time, energy and effort. 

Fresh produce you purchase can be expensive – ask the watermelon lover who buys some in February in Michigan! 

We are blessed with a long growing season in South Carolina and from early May until late October we can enjoy an ever changing bounty of vegetables and fruits.  Learning to enjoy what is in season when it is in season allows us to have the freshest at the lowest price.

There are now farmers’ markets all over Greenville County and an effort is being made to make sure low income families that receive SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Food Stamps) benefits can purchase fresh items at the Saturday Market on Main Street in Greenville using their EBT card.  Other markets have similar programs.

There’s also the chance to learn from the farmers.  They love to get questions about what variety you’re looking at or how to prepare different items.  If you’re looking for something in particular ask if they grow it or know a farmer who does.

If you’re looking for a farmers’ market close to you check out the St. Francis Community Garden blog http://lg35communitygarden.blogspot.com/     and go to the April 26, 2010 “Local, Local, Local” post for a list of local area markets. 

Fresh is best and fresh and accessible is even better.

It isn’t just about the groceries.

Next time you go shopping for groceries, give this a try.  When you reach your vehicle with your full grocery cart instead of emptying it into your vehicle pick up all of the bags you have, as many as you can possibly hold in each hand.  As you stand holding the bags, think about shopping with two small children, say 2 and 4 years old.  Consider how you are going to get home with all those bags, the two small children both of whom really need to be holding hands with you.  Take a look at the area surrounding the store where you shop.  Where are the sidewalks?  How many major intersections would you have to cross to get those groceries and those precious children home safely?  How far would all of you have to walk?

More than 50,000 people in Greenville County live more than a mile from a grocery store and do not have a car.  For many the closest store that sells food is a convenience store with no fresh produce or meat.  For many that closest store also has the highest prices.  For many, not being able to get to a full service grocery store means having to purchase smaller, more expensive packages of food instead of taking advantage of bigger packages at better prices.

Access to food, preferably healthy food, is about more than just having the money to purchase the food.  If you can’t get there, and then get home with the food you need, you can’t feed your family. 

It isn’t just about the groceries.

About Us

Approximately 27% of purchased in the United States goes to waste each year while millions of people go hungry. Loaves & Fishes works to change this contradiction. In 2009, we distributed 1,025,031 meals worth of food.  We serve Greenville County residents at risk of hunger and malnutrition; two thirds are single parent families with young children and 12% are senior citizens. We provide food through a network of emergency food providers in Greenville County.  These organizations include food pantries, soup kitchens, shelter or residential programs, community centers and neigborhood distribution progams.


Mission:
 Our mission is to meet the challeng of hunger by connection willing donors of perishable food with local human services agencies that use food to feed the hungry.


History:

Loaves & Fishes was founded in Greenville, South Carolina in 1991 by local banker Sam Hunt who read a story in The New York Times about City Harvest, the food rescue program in New York City.  Recognizing that a lot of food was also being thrown away in Greenville, Mr. Hunt contacted a few people he thought might be interested in starting such an organization.

 

In that first year, Loaves & Fishes rescued 25,000 pounds of food.  Since that time, we have grown to rescue more than 1,000,000 pounds of food a year, the equivalent of one million meals.